Health care problems are in the news lately and I can’t help but think about the situation from my own very fortunate point of view. Fortunate because I have health insurance and the financial means to pay for care up to my $3,000 deductible. Too many people simply cannot afford either coverage or the deductibles, even when subsidized by an employer. I consider myself lucky.

I want to share three real life stories from my past to illustrate what I think is wrong with our health care system. Maybe you have similar examples. While I don’t know what the solution is, I know that something has to be done. Remember, I’m fortunate. People who don’t have my resources are basically screwed.

Knee Pain

Years ago, when I was still in my 20s, I fell while ice skating in Rockefeller Center. I vaguely remember the fall — I landed hard on my left knee. But I was young and I got up and kept skating.

A year or two went by. I began having problems with my left knee. A lot of pain when I sat with my legs crossed “indian style,” which I usually do, even while at my desk. I had a “real job” back then and insurance. I decided to see an orthopedic surgeon to see what was wrong with my knee. I had no idea whether it was connected to my ice skating mishap and still don’t. But it’s the only “injury” I can connect with it.

This began a multi-step process that completely tapped out my $1,000 deductible (at the time) and cost my insurance company many thousands of dollars. Here are the steps:

• Initial consultation. Tell the doctor what hurts and when it hurts.
• X-rays. Inconclusive — except to show that I was already showing signs of arthritis that was not likely causing this problem.
• MRI. This is the test that fulfilled my deductible. It was also inconclusive.
• Physical therapy. Twice a week, I drove to a physical therapy place about 15 miles from my home. I rode a bike, bounced on a ball, and fiddled around with some kind of resistance machine. I did this for two months. My insurance company paid $90 for each visit.

When my insurance “ran out” for the physical therapy, I went back to the doctor and asked if there was anything else he could do. He seemed not to believe I was in pain. He finally said that they could open it up orthoscopically and take a look. I’m not someone who wants surgery, but if that was the last resort, I was ready. I was tired of wasting time and money. If there was something wrong — and there certainly seemed to be — I wanted it fixed.

More steps:

• Hospital pre-admission. They basically sent me to the hospital to learn how to use crutches. What f*cking waste of time and money that was! Fortunately, I didn’t need to buy a pair; I could borrow them.
• Outpatient surgery. My doctor put two small holes in my knee area while I slept on a table in the O.R. He poked around in there and found I had a torn meniscus. It was torn in the shape of a triangle with a pointy tip that was evidently jabbing me when I crossed my legs. He cut off the torn part, and closed me. up. I don’t think it took him more than an hour to do everything.

I went home the same day. My knee was swollen. I think they gave me painkillers; I don’t remember much pain. I used the crutches the next day, one crutch the day after that, and a cane the day after that. Then I was pretty much back to normal. I don’t even have scars.

This was my first experience with the health care system’s ability to diagnose and fix a relatively minor but annoying health problem. I realized that a cure wasn’t possible until as many part of the health care system could get a piece of the pie as possible:

• Doctor – Several consultations and surgery.
• Physical therapy – don’t even get me started on that.
• Hospital – X-ray, MRI, crutch lessons (that still pisses me off), and outpatient surgery services.
• Support staff for surgery – nurses, anesthesiologist, etc.

But I was “cured.” I was happy.

Back Pain

Fast forward to the summer of 2008. I picked up something heavy while seated at my desk. This “threw out” my back. The pain didn’t begin immediately, but it began in earnest a day or two later. It became unbearable on a flight from Phoenix to Seattle with my husband. So bad that I found clinic in the Seattle area and was able to get in to see a doctor within 30 minutes of arrival.

The doctor started out skeptical. I think a lot of people must go to clinics to get drugs. Although I wanted something to stop the pain, I had to fly my helicopter to Arizona over the next two days. I couldn’t take painkillers. I wanted to know what was wrong and what I could do to fix it.

The doctor was good. After hitting my knees with a hammer and surprising me with the results, she had me perform several movements while seated and while standing. She told me I probably had a herniated disc and that I should ask my doctor for an MRI when I got home. She gave me some muscle relaxers and told me not to take them while I was flying.

I was impressed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going home. I was going to Page, AZ. I figured I’d find a doctor there and follow her advice.

The flight to Arizona was painful, but not unbearable. It wasn’t until I was settled into my camper in a Page campground that the pain became more than I could bear. If I sat at my table for more than 10 minutes, when I got up I could barely walk. I was miserable.

I’d got the number of a local doctor from my health insurance company. But when I called, I was told that the earliest appointment was more than two weeks away. I set up the appointment, not seeing that I had any other choice. The pain got worse by the day. The only relief was when I lay flat on my back, and even that wasn’t making things better. I had to work. I couldn’t just lie around, waiting for a doctor’s appointment that might or might not resolve my problem.

One day, I simply couldn’t take the pain any longer. I found a clinic in Page and went. I signed in. Although the clinic was on my insurance, they wouldn’t accept my insurance. They wanted me to pay up front. There were at least a dozen people waiting in front of me to see a doctor. The wait would be at least two hours. The only seating was aggravating my condition. I was in so much pain that I was crying on and off. No one seemed to care. The other people waiting tried to avoid eye contact.

Finally, I got up and went across the street to the hospital emergency room.

Write this down: Page Banner Hospital. Now, under no circumstances, allow yourself to be taken to this place or any facility associated with it in Page, AZ.

There was no one waiting ahead of me, but I still had to wait 20 minutes to get help. I followed someone down a long hallway, struggling to keep up, since I could barely walk. A doctor came and asked what the problem was. I told him. He did a cursory examination — nothing at all like the doctor in the Seattle clinic had done — and found nothing. He thought I was there for drugs. I told him I wasn’t. I asked him to do a test — something that might shed light on what was wrong. I told him what the doctor in Seattle had said. He wasn’t interested. He sent me with a radiologist for an x-ray.

I was waiting back in the examining room, sitting on a metal chair instead of the examining table, trying not to cry, when I heard the doctor and another emergency room employee at the nurse’s station, chatting and laughing. The doctor told his companion how he liked to use some kind of drug to knock out unruly kids brought to the emergency room. They had a good laugh over that. It was as if I didn’t exist or I couldn’t hear them. They obviously didn’t care about me.

When I’d sat there long enough, the doctor came back in. He said he’d looked at the x-rays and there was nothing on them. He told me to go home and take aspirin.

This “service” cost me over $500. If I didn’t have insurance to negotiate the rates, it would have cost two or thee times that.

A few days later, I tried the clinic again. Ironically, I got to see the doctor I had an appointment for the following week. I gave her my story. She didn’t examine me thoroughly either. Instead, she signed me up for physical therapy.

I made two visits. The first one featured a piss-poor massage. I could have done better for about half the money at a good spa. On the second visit, they had me lie on my stomach and hooked me up to some kind of machine that put electric pulses through my body. Then they just left me alone in a room. After about 10 minutes, I started feeling sick. Five minutes later, I called for help. No one came. A bell rang and the machine shut off a few minutes after that. A few minutes later, someone came in to unhook me from the machine. I told her I didn’t feel well. She said it was because I’d been lying down. Then she left me to leave on my own. I got as far as the appointment desk before I had to sit down. If my back still hurt, I didn’t know it. It was all in my head — dizzy, lightheadedness — I can’t describe it. I asked someone to take my blood pressure. You think I’d asked them to give up their first born! They made me walk to an examining room where they hooked me up to a machine. I was at 180/110. So wonder I felt so bad! But did anyone there seem to care? No. The person who took my blood pressure simply said, “You should get that checked.”

I didn’t show up for the next visit. When they called, I told them they were making me worse. I nearly dropped dead the following month when I saw the bill for the two visits: over $500.

I started dosing up on ibuprofen. Three and four at a time. It kept me functional. I switched from megadoses of ibuprofen to tylenol and back. At night, if I knew I didn’t have to fly the next day, I’d take the muscle relaxants I’d gotten from the doctor in Seattle. The only time I didn’t have painkillers in my system was when I had to fly. But as soon as I was done, I’d dose up again.

This went on for about three weeks. Then, one day, the pain was a lot less than usual. And within a few days, the pain was gone.

Did I have a herniated disc? Had I somehow “fixed” it myself through normal movement? I don’t know. I’ll never know.

All I know is that I spent a lot of money for absolutely no assistance from about a half dozen medical professionals. I spent about a month in serious pain, frustrated that I was unable to get help.

In my honest opinion, the number one reason people should avoid moving to Page, AZ is the absolutely dismal health care available there. If the medical professionals there know what they’re doing — which I doubt — they definitely don’t care.

Maybe I should have given up and gone home to get help. Even if I couldn’t have gotten help in Wickenburg, I could have gone to Phoenix. But I wonder — how many doctors and hospitals and physical therapists would I have to have seen to have the problem diagnosed? How long would I have been in pain — and how much money would I have had to spend?

Chest Pain

Late last year, I began having mild chest pains. The pain would manifest itself in the middle of my chest, at the bottom of my sternum, when or right after I lifted something heavy. At night, I’d sometimes suffer from heartburn or acid reflux, which would wake me with nausea.

I’m in my 40s now and am starting to think seriously about my health. A minor health problem that I would have ignored 20 years ago is now something I should look into. So I started seeking help.

I began with a digestive specialist down in Phoenix. She asked for my symptoms and I told her. She told me to take an over-the-counter remedy for heartburn. Then she listened to my heart with her stethoscope, made some notes on a fancy tablet computer, and left me. I wrote a check for $119.80 against my now $3,000 deductible.

I don’t believe in treating symptoms. I believe in finding causes and treating them. I believe in curing a health problem, not hiding it with medicine.

So I began seeing a local family practitioner, figuring I could start with a basic doctor and work my way up to specialists if I needed to. I told her my symptoms and what I thought it might be: a hiatal hernia. But she zeroed in on the phrase “chest pain” and, after changing my blood pressure medicine, began ordering a bunch of tests:

• Blood tests (3 of them)
• Chest x-ray
• Electrocardiogram
• Sonogram
• Echocardiogram

One of these tests showed a tiny abnormality. That sent me to a cardiologist who set me up for a stress test. I passed the stress test with flying colors. There’s nothing wrong with my heart.

I never thought there was.

I still have the same problem I started investigating in January of this year. It’s now June. I’m in Washington now, away from my doctor. I avoid the problem by simply not lifting anything heavy. When the acid reflux flares up, I take Tums.

I’m not done with this. When I get home, I’ll keep pushing. Maybe some medical professional will take a real interest in my real problem and help me find out what’s causing it. I don’t think I’ve found that person yet. Maybe I’ll get the test I need to determine whether I have a hiatal hernia. I don’t care if the answer is yes or no: I just want to know the answer so I can move forward.

I should mention here that the tests I’ve taken for this “chest pain” problem have completely wiped out my $3,000 deductible. That’s three grand out of my pocket — and the problem is not resolved. All I know is that I have a healthy heart. I guess that’s worth something.

But what of the people without health insurance or an extra $3K in a medical savings plan? How would they have shouldered this burden? Would they be convinced they were on the verge of a heart attack?

This is Wrong

Health care shouldn’t be like this. Doctors should listen to symptoms and do what they can during initial consultations to find out what the problem could be. Of all the details I listed here, there’s only one doctor who seemed to have a clue — the clinic doctor in Seattle. No one else was interested in listening to my symptoms or finding the cause of my pain.

Too many doctors assumed I was just seeing them to get drugs. The truth of the matter is that I have enough old bottles of Percocet and Vicodin at home to last a month. I don’t want or need painkillers. I just want to be heathy and feel that way.

One of the current complaints about the health care system is that doctors order too many tests. I can concur with that. Not only are they ordering too many tests, but they’re apparently not ordering the right tests. Tests that can provide conclusive results. An x-ray is not going to show a herniated disc. An EKG is not going to show a hiatal hernia.

Do doctors come into a conversation with a patient with preconceived notions about what a problem could be and then test for that? If a patient has five of the seven symptoms for a problem, do they not test for the problem because two symptoms are missing? Do they choose tests based on how easy they are to get, how much they cost, or what they can reveal?

The health care system in this country is definitely broken. I’d like to see it fixed in my lifetime.

Okay, here’s a true story about a “senior” couple who committed three acts of stupidity right in front of me in the span of ten minutes.

Background: The couple were living in a motorhome in the parking space next to mine. They’ve been there four days. They also have an SUV that, when they’re on the move, is towed behind the motorhome. This is commonly known as a “towed” or “toad.”

Stupid Trick #1

I went out to locate a cherry orchard. When I returned, I saw the motorhome driving through the parking lot in front of the campground parking spaces. It made a U-turn, then drove back toward where it had been parked. The SUV was also on the move with the wife behind the wheel. The motorhome stopped right in front of my camper, right in the space I’d been parking in every single day and night since they arrived. I pulled in behind it, hoping my presence would give the idiot at the wheel the hint that he should move up. He didn’t take the hint. He parked and shut down the engine.

The whole f*cking parking lot is available, but they have to park in my space as I’m returning.

Stupid Trick #2

I parked elsewhere and walked around the front of my camper. Their water connection is in my “yard.” They’d disconnected their hose but had left the water dribbling out of the faucet. Loudly. You know how some outdoor faucets get when you don’t turn them off all the way? A loud, whistle-gurgle? It was enough noise that it would have kept me up at night.

I figured it was broken, but I stepped up to it anyway and attempted to twist it off. No problem. I shut it off and it stopped dripping.

Apparently, shutting off a faucet is too difficult for the brain-dead.

Stupid Trick #3

It had been windy for the past few days and I’d stowed my awning. Now the sun was out and the wind was calm. While they were right in front of my camper, in my parking spot, hooking up their toad, I began extending my awning. Then I arranged my lounge chair and table under it.

The husband came around the front of my spot. He’d finished hooking up the SUV to the motorhome. “We’ll just be about three minutes,” he said. “Then we’ll be out of your way.”

“No problem,” I said, just wishing he was gone already. “I parked somewhere else.”

“Oh,” he said, looking puzzled. “I thought you were getting ready to leave.”

Tell me, how stupid does a person have to be to think that extending an awning and arranging lawn furniture can be confused with leaving? Any moron could tell that I was settling back in. Can’t drive a camper with a f*cking awning hanging out, can I? Can’t stow a lounge chair if I’ve just extended it on the lawn, can I?

They’re on the Road Now

People like this are driving large motorhomes on our roads and freeways. Right now.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I first met Erik by phone back in 2006. I’d placed an ad on a helicopter forum, looking for summer work with my helicopter. Erik saw it. He called and introduced himself, then asked if I’d ever heard of cherry drying. It was the beginning of a long-distance friendship.

Erik was a helicopter operator based in Seattle who was building a cherry drying business in Central Washington. He’d just broken into the business and was looking for another experienced and reliable pilot to share the work he expected to get.

That first summer, he was unable to get enough work for two of us. But we stayed in touch by phone. We’d talk every few months, sometimes staying on the phone for an hour or more. He was interested in getting a Part 135 certificate for his business and I offered to help with the mountain of paperwork that the FAA requires.

The second year, 2007, he gave me a lead on a cherry contract in Wenatchee. I followed up on it with a bid. I didn’t get the job. He tried to convince me to fly up anyway. He assured me there would be work. I declined; I couldn’t afford to gamble with such a long ferry flight (10 hours each way). He called me at the end of his first day of drying. He was exhausted. He’d flown 10 hours that day and would fly a lot more that season.

Last year, 2008, Erik lined up enough work for both of us. I made the commitment to come up at the end of May. I’d get my helicopter’s annual inspection at his mechanic in Seattle, then get to work with him in early June.

That was the plan, anyway. Two things happened to change it.

In April, there was a late frost that destroyed about 30% of the Central Washington cherry crop, including half the orchards we’d contracted for. Suddenly, there was only half as much work to do.

Around the same time, one night, Erik woke up, got out of bed, and collapsed on the floor. He was paralyzed from the waist down. One of his vertebrae had crushed.

And that’s when they discovered the cancer.

I didn’t ask many questions. It was hard for me. I listened to what he told me when he called, groggy from medication. I didn’t understand most of it, but I didn’t want to ask questions — especially the big one.

When I flew my helicopter up to Seattle, I rented a car and drove to the hospital where Erik was recovering from back surgery. It was the first time we met in person. Although he’d lost an inch or more in height from his back injury, he was still very tall — maybe 6′5″! — and not at all what I expected. But we greeted each other like old friends.

Erik was learning to walk again. I followed him and a physical therapist and a hospital orderly around the hospital floor as Erik took baby steps. He had to stop twice for rest, sinking into the wheelchair the orderly steered along for him. He was upbeat; this was just a setback. He’d be fine. He expected to be flying again soon. Perhaps he’d even come see me in Central Washington, where I’d be handling all the cherry drying work.

He didn’t come by that summer. I spoke to him a few times. He usually sounded tired and weak. But optimistic. Always optimistic.

Erik’s situation had a profound impact on me. I’d always been a kind of carpe diem person, but now things became urgent for me. Erik was 56 years old. Older than me, but still not very old. His life had taken a sudden change for the worse with paralysis, pain, cancer, chemotherapy, and a never-ending stream of health problems. He couldn’t fly, he could barely walk. His life had been taken from him. The same thing could happen to me. Or anyone else. Erik’s situation reminded me that life was short and you had to make the most of it while you could. Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do now; there might not be a tomorrow.

Things for Erik took a turn for the worse in autumn. I tried to plan a trip to Seattle to see him again. With book deadlines, the holidays, and house guests, I couldn’t get it together. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. Maybe I couldn’t bear to see the new reality of the man I’d associated with that upbeat, friendly voice on the phone. Maybe I just wanted to remember the voice and the person I’d imagined with it.

Then I heard he was in remission. I tried calling him several times. I had three phone numbers for him and tried all of them. Every number had a recording of his voice, asking me to leave a message, promising a call back. His work phone number even suggested that he might be out flying. I knew how unlikely that was.

When I dropped off my helicopter in Seattle again this May, I tried to set up another visit. More calls, more e-mail. No response. I didn’t know what to think.

And then today’s phone call from a mutual friend. Erik had passed away. There would be a memorial service for him in Seattle on Saturday. Because of contractual obligations, neither of us could go. I called a florist and arranged to have flowers delivered. I signed it: “Our Thoughts and Prayers are with You; Jim, Maria, and the Cherry Drying Pilots.”

Erik’s gone, but my memory of him and those phone calls remains. He expanded my horizons by bringing me to Washington State, by introducing me to a new kind of flying, a new way to squeeze a few bucks out of my helicopter investment.

And he reminded me that life is short. Live it while you can.

I’ve been writing a lot about my summer gig as a cherry drying pilot. Most folks focus on the flying or the money or the simple fact that I can perform what looks like an easy task, make money, and build flight time. Few people seem interested in what it’s really like.

The truth is, it’s neither fun nor glamorous. In fact, when you look at the big picture and understand the responsibility and potential danger involved, it’s rather tedious.

So I thought I’d take the time to fully describe what being a cherry drying pilot is all about.

An Introduction to Cherry Drying

Let me begin by describing what this is all about.

Cherries grow on trees in orchard blocks in the U.S. northwest (and elsewhere). Like other fruit trees, cherry trees flower in the spring and are pollinated by birds and bees and possibly by other methods I’m not familiar with. The fruits begin to grow.

About three weeks before the cherries are ready to be picked, they are particularly vulnerable to threats that can damage them. One of those threats is water. When it rains, the water sticks to the cherries and can cause them to rot, split, or both. This makes the cherries far less valuable to buyers.

Cherry growers have long tried to find ways to dry the cherries and prevent the rot/split problems. They put fans on tall poles in their orchards and run blowers up and down the rows. But this isn’t usually effective. Enough rain in those last few weeks can destroy the entire crop.

Sometime in the past — maybe 10 or 15 years ago? — someone had the idea of using the downwash of helicopters hovering over the cherry trees to blow the branches around and shake the water off the cherries. This was extremely effective and apparently well worth the cost.

“Cherry drying” by helicopter was born.

How I Got Here

I first heard about cherry drying a little over four years ago. I was looking for summer work with my helicopter and another helicopter pilot, who was based in Seattle, got in touch with me. He was trying to build a cherry-drying operation and wanted to get together a bunch of pilots he could call on each year.

Two years in a row, I almost got work doing this. But there wasn’t enough guaranteed work for me to make the 10-hour (each way) ferry flight from Arizona. Last year, there was. I flew up, stopped in Portland, OR to get some training with another pilot, and set up base in Quincy, WA. I was working for my pilot friend as a subcontractor for several growers and for another cherry drying provider.

Last year wasn’t very good for pilots — but it was great for growers. Why? It didn’t rain. I was on a variety of contracts for a total of seven weeks and only flew 5.2 hours. And because my assigned orchard blocks were so small, most of that time was spent flying from one to another.

This year, everything was a mess. My friend had let his business go because of a serious health problem so he wasn’t digging up work for me. The other cherry drying provider had promised me some work but, at the last possible minute, went out of business. Pilots like me were frantic, trying to find contracts for work. Growers were frantic, trying to find pilots. And out of this mess, with the help of some contacts I had from last year, I managed to get four contracts stretching out over a period of six weeks.

How It Works

The cherry drying work I do is on contract. This year, I contracted directly with growers (or orchard managers) for a 2 or 3 week period. During the contract period, the grower pays me a daily standby fee. Payment of this fee ensures that I will be available to come dry the orchard block within a reasonable period of time — usually within 20 minutes of the call to come.

When it rains, the grower calls. He usually calls at least twice:

• The first call is what I call the “heads up” call. At this point, it’s either raining or very likely to rain on the orchard. The grower wants to make sure I’m aware that I’ll probably be called out to dry soon.
• The second call is the call to action. The grower expects me to arrive as quickly as possible and get right to work.

When I’m finished drying and return to my base, I note the time flown as indicated on my Hobbs meter. At the end of the week, I bill the grower for the flight time at a pre-agreed hourly rate.

The Expenses

Because I can never depend on it to rain, I have to set my standby rate high enough to cover all of my fixed expenses. These expenses include:

• Cost of transporting the helicopter between Arizona (where I live) and Washington (where I dry cherries).
• Cost of getting my truck up to Washington and back.
• Lodging expenses for the entire time; I save money by living in my small RV, which I tow up with my truck.
• Meals and other living expenses.
• Insurance. Last year I had to supplement my regular insurance with a second policy; this year I got a policy that covers all of my operations.

There are also a bunch of startup costs that have to be considered:

• Helicopter. Medium sized helicopters with two-bladed systems are best. Think Robinson R44, Bell JetRanger, and Hiller. R22s and Schweitzer 300s generally don’t push enough air, although they can get into tighter spots.
• Truck. It’s needed to provide ground transportation and haul around fuel.
• 100-gallon fuel tank, pump, filter, and grounding strap so I can carry and pump aircraft fuel.
• Helicopter helmet.
• Nomex flight Suit.

As you can imagine, this can be a major investment. My fuel setup alone cost $2K. And have you priced up helicopter helmets lately?

Finally, the expense many people don’t consider: taking a normally revenue-generating helicopter offline.

You see, when you contract for cherry drying, you have to keep your helicopter near the orchards. That means you can’t hold it out for hire on other jobs. While my helicopter is here in Washington, I can’t be doing charter work down in Arizona. I have no customer base here. And even if I did, I couldn’t fly customers unless I was absolutely certain it wasn’t going to rain.

So suppose I’d fly 5 hours a week in Phoenix but can’t fly those 5 hours in Washington. That’s 5 hours of revenue lost each week. My standby rate has to compensate me for this potential loss of revenue.

What It’s Like

Cherry drying is a waiting game, one that turns you into a local weather expert.

Here’s the kind of analysis I make all day long when there’s weather moving in. The arrow indicates the direction of the weather movement.

Each day starts with a look out the window and at the current day’s weather. I have an Internet connection here, so I can check the weather from a variety of sources throughout the day. I also have a scanner with weather frequencies that broadcast official local weather 24 hours a day. If there’s no rain in the forecast and no clouds in the sky — like most days last season — you’re free to do what you like, as long as you keep monitoring the weather and can be back at base at the slightest hint of rain. But if there’s any rain in the forecast or any clouds in the sky, you need to stick around base, just in case those clouds turn rain-bearing and they drop moisture on your assigned orchard blocks.

Or maybe the day starts with a phone call. Like today.

The point is, when you’re on contract and being paid standby money, you’re responsible for making sure you’re available quickly when called. That means you can’t screw around and do whatever you want wherever you want. If it looks like rain, you need to be ready to fly. Even if it doesn’t rain and you don’t get the call.

For me, that means spending a lot of time hanging around my RV at the golf course. (It’s almost unfortunate that I don’t golf.) It means having access to weather information and having something to do to keep busy so you don’t die of boredom. It means keeping your cell phone fully charged and in a place where it gets a good signal.

It doesn’t mean disappearing to Seattle for a few days without telling anyone. That’s a horror story I heard from a guy who hires pilots as subcontractors. He’d hired one irresponsible pilot who didn’t take the job seriously. When he called the guy to fly, the guy admitted that he was in Seattle and couldn’t get back for hours. That’s too late. The crop would be destroyed by then.

For the amount of money we’re being paid to hang around, the least we could do is hang around.

Oh, and did I mention how long the days are here up in North Central Washington in June and July? Sunrise is at around 5 AM. Sunset is around 9 PM. I have to be available for all daylight hours. That means I have a 17-hour work day.

The Work

Of course, sooner or later those calls will come.

On the first call, I prepare the helicopter and myself for flight. For the helicopter, that means taking off the cockpit cover (if it’s on). I’ll also remove the blade tie-downs, but only if a storm isn’t approaching my position. The helicopter is already pre-flighted. Then I’ll go back to the camper — it’s literally right down the block — and prep myself by pulling on my flight suit. I wear a tank top with it, so I can keep the top half of the flight suit off with the sleeves tied around my waist. It’s hot and humid here and I don’t want to sweat my brains out in a long-sleeved Nomex suit. I make sure all my documents and my sunglasses and the helicopter keys are in my pockets. I put on socks and comfortable shoes. If Alex the bird is outside, I bring him in. I also zip the bed windows closed so rain doesn’t get into the camper. I put a bottle of regular water and a bottle of “vitamin water” in my little six-pack cooler to bring along on the flight.

And then I wait.

The other day, I waited three hours. The second call never came. The first call had been premature and it never rained on the orchard. I had to call the grower to see if he thought he’d need me to fly. He didn’t. I was all dressed up with no place to go.

When the second call comes, I’m ready to go. I pull up the top half of my flight suit and zip up. I lock up the camper and drive back over to the helicopter. I take off the tie-downs (if they’re not already off), do a walk-around, and climb on board. I start the engine and get it warming up. Then I put on my helmet, set up my cell phone to receive calls in flight, and when the helicopter is warmed up, I take off.

I thank my lucky stars that I never had to dry this nightmarish block.

I use my GPS to fly direct to the orchard block. I’ve already scouted all the blocks on foot and by air, so I know how to approach. I come in low over one corner and settle down to 5 to 10 feet over the tree tops. Then I fly slowly down the row. At the end, I turn, move over a row or two — depending on the density of the trees — and fly back to the side I started on. I go back and forth like this at 5 to 10 knots groundspeed, being careful to avoid obstructions like wires, fans, poles, tall bordering trees, hillside rock outcroppings, and buildings. Some orchard blocks are easy to dry. Others are damn near impossible. Most fall somewhere in between — not too difficult to do, but not so easy that you can do it without paying attention.

Complacency can kill you — or at least destroy your helicopter and a bunch of trees.

You can read about my first time drying here.

Cherry Drying Isn’t for Everyone

I can’t tell you how many people have contacted me, asking me to help them get into cherry drying. Do these people understand the expenses involved? The skill level required? The dedication to waiting around for a phone call that may never come? I don’t think so.

I also don’t think they understand the competitive nature of this work. Right now, there are too many pilots for the available work. We’re all competing against each other for contracts. This year, a bunch of JetRanger pilots were so desperate for work that they undercut the rates of most other pilots — they were actually billing themselves out for less than R44s! How can we compete against that?

When the company I flew for part of the season last year fell apart this year, I had to scramble to get the contracts I have. While I got enough work for myself, I could handle more. It’s just tough to break into this work and build a reputation for yourself — especially if you don’t get a chance to fly and prove you can meet growers’ needs. I wasn’t able to prove myself last year and feel lucky to have the opportunity again this year.

And then there’s the skill level required to do this kind of flying. It’s not as easy as it seems — especially if conditions are less than perfect. Sure, any decent pilot should be able to hover slowly over tree tops. But for hours on end? And what if the wind kicks up and you’re dealing with a quartering tailwind as you travel in one direction? Or the block is full of obstructions, like power lines and fan poles? Or bordered by trees? Or there are storms in the area that you need to fly through to reach your orchard blocks?

Why do you think I wear a helmet and a Nomex flight suit when I fly?

No Flying Today

I worked on this blog post on and off all day. I watched the storm clouds build and move in the sky and on Doppler radar. I saw the scary yellow blobs of convective activity flare up and fade out on my computer screen.

It’s still cloudy, but if the radar can be believed, it’s not threatening rain over my orchard.

But it’s only 5 PM. There are still more than 4 hours left in my work day.

I’m in Quincy, WA, right now, living in my camper while I work four cherry drying contracts. I live in my camper because it’s cheaper than living in a motel. A lot cheaper. And since I can cook my own meals, I save a ton of money over the cost of a motel.

One of my contracts is for an orchard down by the Columbia River. There’s a campground literally across the street from it. The campground is also right on the river. I thought it might be nice to stay there for the duration.

I called. They wanted $42 per night for a hookup that included water and power, but no sewer. They weren’t interested in giving a discount for long-term stays. In fact, they didn’t seem to want long-term guests. I figured it was because they were so busy they didn’t need the business.

I knew I could camp at the Colockum Golf Course (formerly the Quincy Golf Course) for $300/month. The site included electricity, water, and sewer. High-speed, reliable WiFi was also available for an additional $35/month. There’s even a restaurant on the premises.

I couldn’t justify the additional $30+ per night for a campsite with fewer amenities. I parked at Quincy, where I’ll likely spend the next seven weeks.

Yesterday evening, I drove down to the orchard to refresh my memory about the setup. I needed to know where the powerlines were and whether there was a fan in the block. While I was down there, I drove through the $42/night campground.

Every single spot was empty.

So explain this to me: wouldn’t it be more beneficial to get someone in there for $20/night ($600/month) rather than no one in there for $42/night?

A perfect example of how greed can be stupid.

About two weeks ago, I realized that I couldn’t find my everyday watch.

I had four watches:

• A Swatch that I bought years ago when I didn’t mind plastic watchbands. I don’t wear it anymore.
• A Minnie Mouse watch that I bought in Disney World a few years back. I like it a lot, but with my failing vision, I can’t read it.
• A Bulova dress watch with a tiny rectangle face, four lines instead of 12 numbers, a tiny diamond at the 12 position, and a gold-tone band. This is my dress watch and I only wear it if I dress up and need to know the time. Which is so seldom, I pretty much never wear it.
• An Eddie Bauer watch. (No snide comments, please!) I got it on sale for $40 at an Eddie Bauer store. It was waterproof to 10 meters and came with three denim watch bands. Which was a good thing because it became my everyday watch and I wore out all the bands.

It was the Eddie Bauer watch that I’d lost. I wasn’t terribly upset. Although it was my everyday watch, I didn’t have much of an attachment to it. It’s not like it was a collector’s item or a keepsake. It was a cheap, functional watch.

How I Figured I’d Lost It

I figured I’d taken it off one day and left it on the kitchen table or on my desk. If you saw my kitchen table or desk, you’d recognize the black hole-like tendencies. I’m the queen of clutter and there’s a lot of junk just sitting around, waiting to be dealt with.

But when I cleared off the kitchen table and my desk, the watch wasn’t there.

So then I figured I’d left it on my night table and that it had fallen into the little waste paperbasket beside it and had been taken out with the trash. That’s how I probably lost my Pulsar dress watch years ago (although I do suspect my cleaning lady back then; she may have cashed in on my carelessness).

In any case, the watch was apparently gone for good. Minnie Mouse wasn’t going to cut it unless I added a magnifying lens over the watch crystal.

It was time for a new watch.

Zulu Time

I’m a pilot and thought it might be nice to have a watch that also told Zulu Time. Zulu Time is the same as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and it doesn’t adjust for daylight savings time. In Arizona, it’s always 7 hours after current time (because we don’t have daylight savings time either). So if it’s 9 AM in Arizona, it’s 4 PM GMT or 1600 hours Zulu.

And yes, I can do the math in my head. But I figured, why not get a watch that just tells me Zulu time.

I did some research. Women’s watches, in general, are pretty useless. Faces too small, often too ornate. So I concentrated on men’s watches. But I have a pretty small wrist and they’d likely look ridiculous on me.

Long story short, I found the Torgeon T15 ladies watch. It has a big face, but not as big as the men’s version. It has numbers and hands that are big enough to see and read. It also has the date and a nice precision second hand. But what makes it a pilot’s watch is the red Zulu Time hand. It travels at half-speed around the dial, pointing to an inner scale of numbers from 1 to 24. When set properly, it points to the hour of zulu time.

Notice I said “when set properly”? That’s because I couldn’t set it. I tried five times. For a while the damn hand decided it was going to hide behind the hour hand and ride it around the dial.

But Mike, my husband, collects watches and knows a lot about them. The other day, he set it for me. So now I’m good until July 1, when I need to change the date. I’ll probably just keep it a day off until I see him again.

Postscript on that Eddie Bauer Watch

About two days after I got the new watch, I dipped into the big dog cookie box in the cabinet to pull out a bedtime treat for Jack the Dog. Mike buys certain things at Costco, so they come in really big boxes. The dog cookies are in a big box.

I stuck my hand in and felt something that definitely wasn’t a dog cookie. Could it be? I pulled my hand out, grasping my old Eddie Bauer watch. The band had broken.

Now you might think that this is odd. After all, there’s really only one way that watch could have gotten into the box: I’d reached in for a cookie weeks before and had pulled out a cookie while leaving the watch, which had been on my wrist, behind. How, you might ask, could I possibly not notice my watch falling off?

I wish I had an answer for you.

Maybe my subconscious mind had just decided it was time for a new watch.

It’s hard to believe, but I was extremely productive before social networking came into my life. Not only did I write or revise up to 10 computer how-to books in a year, but I wrote articles about using computers, learned to fly a helicopter and then built a helicopter charter business, and even held down a “real” seasonal job one summer. In my spare time — which I did have — I worked on several novels, went motorcycling and horseback riding, and had a vegetable garden.

People used to say to me, “How do you get so much work done?” I truthfully replied that I didn’t watch much television. I still believe that TV is the main time sucker of “civilized” nations.

What Sucks My Time

Maintaining a blog was the first thing to cut into my time. I took to blogging like a Portuguese water dog takes to water. I always wanted to keep a real journal and the original idea of blogging was a “Web log.” I started blogging in 2003 and have since written about 3,000 entries for this and two other blogs. Many of them chronicle days in my life and things I’m thinking and are a valuable memory aid for me. Others provide information on how to use software or avoid scams. Still others are history lessons or opinion pieces about politics and other controversial topics. I couldn’t give up my blogging any more than I could give up eating. It’s a part of my life.

The loss of my novel manuscript in a hard disk crash — I really thought it was backed up, so you can save the lectures; it was a difficult lesson to learn and I don’t need it rubbed in my face — was extremely painful. I haven’t been able to write any fiction at all since then. Maybe I’m using it as an excuse. Or maybe social networking has cut too deeply into my time, making it impossible to spend time on the things I used to care more about.

I managed to avoid the MySpace craze. That was the first experiment in social networking and a good friend of mine was hooked hard. I didn’t see the point. She was using it as a home page and I already had one of those. (I’ve had a personal Web site since 1994.)

Then LinkedIn came out and it seemed like a good idea for professional networking, so I joined up. I never spent much time there — and I still don’t. I have a decent sized “network” there, including other writers and editors and even a few pilots. When work got slow, I tried working LinkedIn to get new connections and jobs. I failed miserably. Everyone else on LinkedIn was looking for work; no one was looking for workers. I wrote a bit about it here and elsewhere in this blog.

Then Facebook, which seemed like the grownup’s version of MySpace, caught my attention and I was sucked in. But I was never hooked. It seemed to me like a complete waste of time. I was apparently expected to build some sort of community based around my home page and “wall.” There were applications and advertisements and a never-ending stream of “friend invitations” from people I did and didn’t know. And e-mail. And I think I was expected to visit the home pages of my “friends” and write on their “walls.” And use applications to share frivolous information or give hugs or sign petitions. I never really participated and tended to ignore all that e-mail Facebook sent me.

But when Twitter caught my eye in February or March of 2007, it seemed far more interesting to me. “Microblogging.” Meeting new people though short comments they post. At least that’s what it was supposed to be. Like most new Twitter users, I didn’t “get it” at first. But unlike many new Twitter users, I did finally decide that it was for me. I embraced it, and still do. It’s my water cooler, my way to socialize in my otherwise lonely, home-based office. Best of all, it’s easy enough to take on the road with my cell phone. I’ve met people on Twitter who have become real friends and enjoy the interaction with the 100 or so folks I follow and the others who follow me.

Why?

Meanwhile, Facebook continued to bug me with e-mail messages from “friends.” Check out this Web site, add this application, join this group. It never seemed to end. Even when I thought I’d shut down all the e-mail notifications, it continued to dribble in, like there was a leak in the dam, threatening to open up and overwhelm me. I’d visit my Facebook account and look at the home page and wonder why it had all that crap on it. I hadn’t put it there. I couldn’t get rid of most of it. I’d see comments posted by people I knew or didn’t know days or weeks before. Questions I hadn’t answered. Remarks related to Twitter updates.

How could I let something I had almost no control over represent me to the strangers who wanted to know me better?

And why should I bother? I already had a blog that can be found with the easiest address of all: my name.

The other day, a real friend used Facebook to suggest that I follow (or friend?) another Facebook user, FactCheck.org. I was already aware of that user’s Web site. I didn’t see any reason to follow their content in two places any more than I’d see a reason for someone to follow my content in two places. I didn’t see any reason why my friend couldn’t just send me a link to their Web site. Why use a third-party application to get me to follow a Web site in a third party application? Why add a layer of bullshit to ever-more-complex online experience?

I’d been considering suspending my Facebook account for some time and had almost done it twice. But this was the last straw. I had enough social networking bullshit wasting my time. I was obviously missing the point of Facebook and didn’t see any reason why I should devote time and energy to “getting it.” I was already wasting enough time with LinkedIn and Twitter. I had a life to live and I didn’t want to live it in some kind of virtual world. Facebook would be the first step in shedding the social networking crap weighing me down.

So I suspended my Facebook account.

Will I be back one day? Probably not. Will I miss it? Definitely not.

My Advice

Once again, I’m putting out a plea to the folks who spend more time in front of their computers than with their real friends and families: think about what you’re doing. Are you really getting any benefit from the time spent online? Can’t you see how it’s sucking your life away? Wouldn’t you rather spend most or all of that time with real people who matter to you doing real things and building real memories?

I know I would. And I’m trying to.

LinkedIn is likely the next to go.

But the good part about all this is that it’s encouraging me to keep moving.

I created this time-lapse today, while cleaning my office. Here are the before and after images; as you can see, it really needed some work.

This is what I had to clean.

This is what it looked like when I was done.

Ready for the action? Here it is. The formula: one shot at f22.0 (which explains the blur) every 30 seconds, put together in a 10 frames per second video. The lens used is a 10.5mm fisheye. Be sure to check out my dog.

This is too much fun.

Here’s the yellow version…

This is the time of year when all those prickly cacti call out for attention that isn’t painful. They’re starting to flower.

My husband and I planted every single plant within the wall that surrounds our immediate yard. The rest of our 2-1/2 acres is mostly as nature intended.

We planted desert plants because we live in the desert and see no reason to pour precious water into the ground if we don’t have to. That doesn’t mean that we don’t irrigate at all. We do — a little. But not much. You see, most of the plants are cacti.

…and here’s the salmon version.

Right now, the prickly pear cacti are flowering in my back yard. Interestingly, they’re blooming in two slightly different colors: a yellow and a pale salmon. The plants came from the same source on the same day and were planted at the same time. Why they are two different colors is beyond me.

The flowers are amazing. They look almost like wax. Here’s a glimpse of them; you can click a larger photo to see it in my Photo Gallery.

What’s also interesting about these cacti is that last year they produced mostly new cactus pads. Think of the pads as branches or leaves. Each pad will produce either flowers or more pads. Last year we had lots of pads — so many that I cut some young ones off and grilled them up to have with dinner a few times. But this year it’s flowers. Don’t know how the plant decides.

Cholla Flowers

The cholla (pronounced choy-ya) flowers — or at least one type of cholla — there are many — are also blooming. Cholla is a particularly nasty type of cactus. I can blame the poor quality of this photo on the simple fact that I refused to get close enough to this cactus for it to bite me. This type of cholla grows well in my yard; green and hardy. The flowers were a surprise; I guess I missed them last year.

More cactus flowers are on the way. I’ll try to snap photos of them as they bloom. I noticed that the new arms on our big saguaro have flower buds but the top doesn’t have any yet. I’m wondering about that.

The hedgehog cacti are just about finished blooming now. I got a great photo of one in Page, AZ last week; you can see it in this blog post. I haven’t had time to add the other photos of this cactus to my gallery; I hope to do it soon.

Not enough hours in a day.

I bought Alex the Bird a stand that he can hang out on in my office. The idea was really to take it down to Rear Window (our Phoenix condo) so he can hang out with me when I work there. He really hates it there and I know he’d like it better if he could spend more time with me. But since neither of us spend much time at Rear Window, the stand hasn’t made it down there yet.

Anyway, I realized that with him standing behind me, I could probably get some good photos of him with my computer’s built-in iSight camera. So I took a shot.

Then I realized that I could also make a movie with the camera. So I fired up iMovie and recorded directly from the iSight into an iMovie file. Here’s the result. Alex can talk up a storm when he’s in the mood, but he wasn’t at his best this evening. I’ll try again another time.

You may have noticed that my blogging activity has dropped off again. There are two reasons for this:

• I’ve tried three times to write a blog entry and all three times the text is moving off on a tangent that leads to a dead end. I’m blocked.
• I’m working against three deadlines, only one of which is self-imposed, to get a bunch of stuff done. I can’t seem to work as quickly as I used to.

Whatever the reason, I’m blogging less and feeling more stressed. Some people might argue that those two things are not related, but I think they are, at least in part.

When I start my day with a blog post, as I did each day last week, I feel good about myself and ready to start the day. Maybe it’s because I’ve managed to produce something at the very start of my day, before most folks are even awake. Maybe it’s because it sets the pace of my day to get more done. Maybe it’s because writing in my blog often helps get things off my chest or out of my head, stored in a safe place so I can clear them from my mind. In any case, blogging helps me to think and to work better.

What’s on My Mind

This week I’ve got a ton on my mind.

My company was mentioned in Arizona Highways magazine and that has led to a dramatic increase in calls for my flying services. In the past two weeks, I’ve sold three 6-day excursions and have at least two other people seriously considering it. If this pace keeps up, I’ll be flying two to three excursions a month during the spring and autumn months. While this is a great thing, it also brings on a lot of stress — making reservations, worrying about customer satisfaction, thinking about weather and helicopter maintenance issues — the list goes on and on.

This stress is only complicated by the fact that I’m working on a book revision that I need to have done by mid-May. While the software I’m writing about isn’t technically even in beta yet, it’s pretty stable. But there are a few features that simply don’t work. I don’t have access to the bug reporter, where I normally contribute to the company’s efforts to identify and squash bugs, so I don’t know if they are aware of the little problems I’m seeing. And, in the back of my mind, is the possibility that the software’s interface might change. I’m 5 chapters into a 24 chapter book right now — a book rich with thousands of screen shots — and if there’s a major interface change tomorrow or next week or as I’m wrapping up, I’ll have to do the whole revision all over again. How’s that for a stressful thought?

And why do I need the book done by mid-May? That’s another stressful situation. I’ve been contracted for cherry drying in Washington State this summer. Unfortunately, I haven’t been given a start date yet. It’ll take me a week to get the helicopter up to Seattle for its annual inspection, come home to get my truck and trailer, and drive back up there to my contract starting point. But I don’t have any details about where or when I’ll begin work. I could theoretically get a call next week — while I’m on one of my excursions — telling me to report in on May 5. I’d have to scramble hard to make that happen.

Related to this is my need to fill at least one seat on the flight from the Phoenix area to the Seattle area. It’s about a 10 hour flight and the cost of such a flight is enormous. I need a couple of passengers or a helicopter pilot interested in building time to bring in some revenue for the flight. Trouble is, it’s hard to get the word out, few people who hear about it understand what an incredible opportunity the flight is, and those people who do want to go simply don’t have that kind of money. My summer profitability depends, in part, on covering my costs for the ferry flight with revenue.

And on top of all this is the video project from hell, which I prefer not to discuss here until it has been resolved.

So you can see why my mind might not be tuned in properly for blogging.

Taking it One Day at a Time

I know that the best way to work through this stressful time is to take one day at a time and get as much done as possible. My main motivation is peace of mind. The more things I complete, the fewer things I’ll have on my mind to stress me out. While some thing are out of my control — will they change the user interface of the software? will I be called to Washington before mid May? — others aren’t. I just need to plug away at them until I get them taken care of.

And I need to blog every morning. It sure does feel better when I do.

It’s no secret that central Arizona, near Phoenix, gets brutally hot in the summer time. Daytime shade temperatures in July and August typically 110°F or above, and you can add 20 to 30°F if you happen to step out into the unyielding sun. We realized after just a few short years in Wickenburg that we’d need a place to escape to.

I heard about Howard Mesa on a radio commercial advertising 10-, 36-, and 40-acre parcels near the Grand Canyon. Mike was away at the time — he telecommuted to a job in New Jersey and spent about a week and a half each month there — so I hopped in my Toyota and made the 154-mile drive alone to check it out. I was soon seated in a big sedan beside Larry, who would be our sales guy, driving up well-maintained dirt roads to the few lots that were still available on top of the mesa. I fell love with the second lot he showed me, a pie-shaped wedge near the mesa’s highest point. The wide “crust” of the pie shape was flat and bordered state land, where I was assured nothing could be built. The rest of the land dropped off gently toward the west. Every inch of the property was buildable, but the obvious building site was right before the dropoff, where an old two-track road used by ranchers and hunters led to a clearing, where a single cow rested in the shade of a pinyon pine.

The land was off-the grid — that means no electricity, water, telephone, gas, or cable television — five full miles from pavement and about ten miles from the nearest store where one could buy a quart of milk. Williams, AZ, which had a supermarket and restaurants, was 20 miles south. Valle, the crossroads of Routes 64 from Williams and 180 from Flagstaff, was 14 miles north. The entrance to Grand Canyon National Park was another 30 or so miles north of that.

It was the quiet, beauty of the place that hooked me. Not a single building was within sight — just rolling hills of golden grasses, studded with the dark green of juniper and pinyon pines. Once Larry shut off his Buick, all I could hear was the wind, with the occasional call of a crow or raven.

But it was the 360° views that sold me. To the north, is Red Butte and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. To the west and northwest, are distant mountain ranges near Seligman, as well as Mount Trumbull on the Arizona strip 85 miles away. To the south is Bill Williams Mountain, just south of Williams. And to the east is snowcapped Mount Humphreys and the San Francisco Peaks, the tallest mountain in Arizona.

The price for all this amazing remote beauty? Less than $1,000 per acre. And our lot was priced higher than most others because of the view.

That’s how it all started. And what we realized just last night is that we’ve owned this place for ten years now. It was the Toyota that trigged the date memory. I bought my Jeep in the summer of 1999 and I was still using my Toyota as my primary car when we bought the place. That meant April/May 1999.

Our use of the place has varied over the years. In the beginning, we camped there on weekends in a pop-up camper, which we kept folded up on the property when we weren’t around. We had a round pen for the horses, which we’d bring with us. We got the entire 40 acres fenced in so the horses could run free. Then we began preliminary work on getting a house built. After a false start getting ripped off by Lindal Custom Homes — they told us we could build a home for $60/square foot but needed $600 to draw up the plans; the plans resulted in a home that would cost $120/square foot to build — we started exploring other modest custom home solutions. We had a septic system put in. I spent the summer of 2004 in a trailer up here while I flew for one of the Grand Canyon helicopter tour operators. And then, to give us a place to store our stuff while we were preparing to build, we put in what we call our “camping shed.”

And that’s where things got stalled.

You see, although I still love our place atop the mesa and would love to build a full-time residence up here, Mike thinks it’s a bit too lonely and remote. With so much going on for us in the Phoenix area these days, we don’t come up here nearly as often as we used to. To further complicate matters, the future of the area has become questionable. Much of the land up for resale and several property owners have put up commercial style buildings or trashed up their lots with a lot of junk. All this takes away much of the charm of the place. It seems senseless to pour a lot of money into a permanent residence when we’re not sure whether our new home will be looking out over a bunch of used shipping containers and broken down cars or another oversized Quonset hut or a second-hand mobile home left to deteriorate in the sun and wind.

So we come up here on the occasional weekend and soak up the silence or the sound of the wind. If the nights are moonless, we can see almost as many stars as Hubble — or at least it seems that way — along with the distant glow of Las Vegas, 173 air miles away. Jack the Dog spends most of his time investigating the rocks, looking for lizards or pack rats, or chasing rabbits. Alex the Bird hangs out in his cage, playing with his toys and whistling along to the music on my iPod. Mike and I go for walks or do odd maintenance tasks to keep our camping shed in good condition. Sometimes we’ll go for lunch and a walk along the rim at the Grand Canyon. Other times, we’ll drive out to Flagstaff for some Thai food and to pick up some odds and ends in Home Depot or the RV repair shop. Still other times — like this weekend — we’ll just lounge in the shade on the camping shed’s “porch,” reading or talking.

Its restful — the perfect antidote for the poisons of modern civilization.

When I’m finished with this year’s cherry drying gig, I’ll probably spend a month or so up here with Jack and Alex. Mike will join me on weekends. I’ll work on the last of the three books I have contracted for this year. I’ll make day trips to Williams or the Grand Canyon or Flagstaff. I’ll enjoy the violent thunderstorms that roll through during monsoon season. I’ll take my Jeep to explore the forest roads bordering Grand Canyon National Park and likely find one or two new places to look down into that vast abyss without a tourist in sight. At night, I’ll look out at the stars and listen to the coyotes. It’ll be a simple life — an escape from reality.

Something I need more often than most people.

Since being interviewed for an NPR piece about diet books (read/listen to “Diet Books: Fat On Profits, Skinny On Results?“), I’ve received numerous e-mails and other contacts from folks offering me advice on my diet. Here’s one from today’s e-mail:

I caught the interview you gave on NPR about dieting books.

If you want to learn about health and nutrition read “The China Study”, by T. Colin Campbell, PhD.

All diet books are wrong, because they are about eating less of the same, unhealthy food. If we base our diet on whole, plant-foods, we will drastically reduce our risk of chronic diseases and as a side effect, lose weight. This book shows the huge amount of science available, and it’s really, really interesting!!

Ironically, he recommends a diet book and then says that “all diet books are wrong.” I guess he means all of them except the one he’s recommending. How many other people are saying the same thing with another book? All of them.

I can’t tell you how annoyed I am by this. I began to write the guy a response, but I figured it might be better to just post it here, so everyone can read it:

My friend Tom gave me a copy of The China Study. I gave it away. I am not interested in diet books at all. Period.

And frankly, I’m pretty sick of strangers telling me what I should and shouldn’t eat. You don’t know a damn thing about me. Why do you assume that I eat “unhealthy food”?

I eat fresh vegetables, both raw and cooked simply. I eat fresh fruit, plain yogurt, whole grains. I eat grilled meats and fish. I don’t fry, I don’t eat much processed food, I don’t eat ANY fast food. I don’t drink soda or energy drinks and I don’t use artificial sweeteners. I minimize salt usage and season with fresh herbs whenever I can.

I eat healthier than 90% of the people I know. The other 10% are either vegetarians or misguided fools who follow the advice of books like The China Study and give up the foods they love, hoping to extend their lives by a few years through that sacrifice. All you have to do is eat a nicely marbled grilled steak in front of them to see how they’re suffering.

Life is short. Why shouldn’t I eat what I want to eat — especially when there’s nothing really wrong with it? I don’t want to live forever and I want to enjoy my life. Eating is one of my simple pleasures.

My weight problem — which isn’t even serious, according to my doctor — is due to inactivity and midlife metabolism change. Simply said, I need to eat less and exercise more. But don’t most Americans?

Sorry if I seem angry, but I’m really bothered by strangers trying to advise me when they know absolutely nothing about me.

This is what I wrote, but I didn’t send it. In fact, I didn’t answer the e-mail at all. Maybe he’ll see the response here. Maybe he won’t. I don’t really care.

I guess my point is, you’re wasting your time if you try to advise me on issues relating to diet, weight loss, or eating habits. Enough said.

And Tom, if you’re reading this, do treat yourself to a good steak once in a while. It really won’t hurt you. I’m sure the person I gave the book to will get a lot more out of it than I would.

Arizona Highways has long been one of my favorite magazines. There’s no other magazine that consistently shows off the beauty of our state with high quality photographs and articles that paint pictures with words. I’m sure that more than a few people have been lured to Arizona by something they saw in the pages of Arizona Highways. And I’m sure plenty of us have remained to make Arizona our home.

Last fall, I had to follow the route of Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. I’d hired a video production company to make a promotional video about my company and wanted footage from every location we visited, from Phoenix to Monument Valley. There would be a videographer on board for the entire six-day trip and another following in a truck with equipment they expected to need at each location. Since I had a spare seat on the helicopter, I decided to offer it to two different high quality travel publications. The idea was to put a photographer or writer on board and maybe build a relationship with that publication to trade flight time with advertising.

At least that was the idea.

The Arizona Highways editor responded quickly. He assigned one of the magazine’s writers, Keridwen Cornelius, to accompany us and write up a story about the excursion. If everything worked out well and they could use what she wrote, they’d send a photographer out to get pictures later.

I was thrilled, but didn’t really expect much. I certainly didn’t expect the 10 pages about my Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure that appeared in the May 2009 issue.

I got my advance copies about two weeks ago. I ate up Keridwen’s words and aerial photographer Adriel Heisey’s photographs. The article is amazing. Keridwen gave readers a look into her mind as she experienced each part of the excursion, from our departure from the Terminal 3 Helipad at Sky Harbor Airport to our winding canyon flight down the Verde River — and everything in between. For the first time ever, I’m able to understand how people who don’t usually fly around Arizona in helicopters see and feel about the magnificent terrain.

(By the way, this is one of the reasons I like to fly people who don’t usually fly. I get to experience a bit of the wonder of it all through their eyes.)

The magazine reached subscribers on Friday, April 10. That’s when my phone started ringing. I’ve been answering questions and sending out printed literature ever since. The Flying M Air Web site has also been busy, with about four times the hits it usually gets. The magazine just hit the newsstands and the Arizona Highways Web site. I formally announced it on Flying M Air’s Web site and began offering a 10% discount for all excursions booked before June 30.

And yesterday I booked an excursion for a couple from Pine, AZ for the last week in this month.

To say that this is a breakthrough for me is an understatement. One of the toughest things about building a small business is getting the word out about your services — especially when your services have a limited market and are relatively costly. My company is the only one in the country offering multi-day excursions by helicopter. But I can spend thousands of dollars on advertising and not be able to reach the right people. After all, ads are ads — we see so many ads, we know how to filter them out. But editorial content is different. And there’s nothing better than seeing a positive report about a product or service written by an objective third party.

I feel extremely fortunate to have my business covered in such a way.

I hope everyone reading this goes out and tracks down a copy of the May 2009 Arizona Highways. I really think you’ll enjoy every single page.

So many of my videos are about flying or show off scenes from the air. I thought I’d work on one that was a little closer to earth. This one features my parrot, Alex the Bird, foraging for treats in his cage. I blogged about this particular toy way back in 2006.

The text that follows is the narration you’ll find on the video. The video is at the bottom of this post. This was mostly an experiment to see how I could use the voiceover feature of iMovie ‘09. I couldn’t. I wound up recording the narration in Audio Hijack Pro and editing it in Fission, then dragging clips into iMovie. iMovie apparently no longer includes audio editing features. This is unfortunate. I’m trying to figure out why Apple keeps removing features from iMovie as it updates it. (Of course, I can’t complain, given the image stabilization feature is so incredible.)

Anyway, here’s the narration and video. Enjoy.

I’ve put together this little video of Alex foraging for treats. I thought it might be interesting for folks who like birds or are considering buying one. It’s also a video exercise for me, but that’s another story.

In the wild, parrots forage for food. That means they use their claws and beaks to tear apart nuts and berries and pull bark off of trees looking for food. They don’t have their food in ceramic cups like caged parrots do. Foraging is an instinct. It also keeps the birds pretty busy all day so they don’t have time to be bored.

Alex has never lived in the wild, but he still has foraging instincts. And I like to keep him busy so he doesn’t get bored and engage in self-destructive behavior, like feather plucking.

What you see here is a cage-like structure that I bought years ago when I first got Alex. It came with shreddable toys and blocks in it. Alex was only mildly interested in it. But when I replaced those toys with plain old shredded paper surrounding Alex’s favorite treats — edamame or soy bean pods and unsalted cashews — he got very interested. So every few days, I set him up with this hanging toy so he can forage for his favorite foods.

As you watch this video, you might notice a few things.

First, Alex knows the treats are in there and he knows what he needs to do to get at them — pull all the paper out. This looses up the tightly packed cage so he can pull the beans and nuts out and eat them. You’ll see him successfully remove a few beans and nuts in this video. I cut out a lot of the shredding activity. It took Alex about 40 minutes to work through the toy today, and no one is interested in watching him that long.

Also, you’ll see Alex use his feet to steady the swinging toy. Letting the toy swing from the top of the cage makes it tougher for him. Tougher is better. I’ve learned that the goal is to make the foraging task difficult enough that it takes him a long time but not so tough that he gives up.

You may also notice Alex glancing back at the camera. The camera was sitting on a tripod near his cage and he didn’t quite trust it. He keeps looking at it to make sure it’s not sneaking up on him to attack him. Fortunately, he’s more interested in the treats than the camera.

Alex is almost eight years old. He’s expected to live 40 or 50 years. Right now, he’s just finishing up his winter molt, so his feathers don’t look as good as they would in a month or two. He molts every winter and looks pretty ratty for about two to three months.

I hope you enjoyed this visit with Alex. You can stop by my Web site, AnEclecticMind.com, to see more videos from my life.